IIA. Related Applications
There are no applications related hereto heretofore filed in this or any foreign country.
IIB. Field of Invention
Our invention relates generally to spacing and support modules for spacedly arrayed elongate cylindrical materials and more particularly to such modules that have thickened, deformable indented portions and reinforced surfaces.
IIC. Background and Description of Prior Art
Rolled web material, piping and similar cylindrical objects must commonly be dealt with in the present day packaging arts especially for transportation and storage. Much of this material is of a relatively delicate and expensive nature and it may become substantially worthless if it be physically damaged in even small portions of its total volume to exacerbate problems of supporting and protecting the material. Commonly, the material is handled in palletized arrays comprising a plurality of cylinders in spaced axially parallel alignment so arrayed as to form plural horizontal rows and vertical columns. Many and various spacers and supports for such arrays have heretofore become known. Our invention provides a new, novel and improved member of this class of supports.
Such supports as heretofore known have had various problems with their physical integrity. In general, such supports have taken a configuration of a cross element defining plural spaced saddle-like indentations to support usually the lower half of the peripheries of a series of spaced cylinders. Necessarily such configuration requires the support members to have a thinner portion at the point of cylinder support and because of this the support point has been the weakest portion of the supports. Commonly in arraying a plurality of cylinders in a supported module, the cylinders are, for convenience or by custom, aligned with parallel axes and in planar columns and planar rows. This configurational array tends to further enhance the problem of support integrity, as commonly the weakest points of a plurality of cross supports are aligned in vertical columns which tends to increase the potential of physical corruption of the support structures.
The problem is further increased by the nature of the materials from which such supports are formed. Commonly to be useful for their purpose, support elements must be formed of some relatively soft, resilient material so that they will not physically damage material that they are to support. One of the more common materials preferred in present day commerce for such purposes is traditional unified foamed polystyrene pellet material. Any consolidated foamed polymeric material in general, and the styrene material in particular, tends to be compressed somewhat by the weight of cylinders of material that it supports and when this styrene material is arrayed in vertical columns, the weight of supported material tends to be somewhat additive to further enhance the compression. As the support material compresses, it becomes thinner and generally decreases in strength to again increase the potentiality of physical corruption of the support modules.
If the support elements are physically corrupted and do not maintain the array of a group of cylinders oftentimes even with strapping on a pallet, the arrayed cylinders will move sufficiently from their predetermined positions to cause damage to the supported material. If groups of such arrayed material are stacked vertically, the problem is enhanced as a lower portion of the material may move sufficiently to cause an upper portion to become positionally unstable and fall or break its strapping to further damage the amassed array. Our invention solves these problems by presenting a new and novel spacing support for such elongate cylindrical materials.
We provide an elongate rectilinear cross support defining one surface with plural cavities to contain somewhat less than half of the periphery of a plurality of spaced cylinders of material aligned with parallel axes in spaced planes perpendicular as heretofore done. In finer structure, however, our cross-supports differ from the prior art by providing a bridge of material extending into the cylinder cavities in their thinnest portions which support the weight of a cylinder. Preferably the size and thickness of this bridge material is determined functionally relative to the mass of the cylinders to be supported and the compressability of the materials involved so that the weight of the cylinders compress the material sufficiently so that the ultimate surface substantially conformally fits the surface of a cylinder to be supported. This bridge material may be variously configured to accomplish its purpose, but normally for cylindrical material it takes the shape of an upwardly rising arch of a cross-sectional shape of a circular sector.
Our bridge element tends to solve multiple problems existent in prior supports. Firstly, it allows use of softer, fairly compressible materials by making use of their compressive characteristics to enhance their function rather than to detract from it. The material in the bridge area is compressed so that the ultimate support configuration is maintained to support a cylinder conformally about part of its periphery. Secondarily, the compressed material in the support area provides enhanced resilience for nondamaging support, but at the same time, the material is not thinned as it was in the past, so that it has higher strength, both in shear or compression, to maintain its structural integrity.
In a specie of our invention, the flat surface of a support opposite that defining its indentations is provided with a sheet of reinforcing material that is thinner than the support, but of substantially greater strength. Such material commonly will take the form of a fiberboard material, such as the more durable cardboards or pressboards, a plastic, or some combinations of these materials, though it may also include wood. The reinforcing material preferably is adhered to the flat surface of the support to add its physical strength and rigidity to the compound support member so formed to further enhance potential durability and strength.
For medial support modules that are positioned between two vertically adjacent layers of cylindrical material, two support elements may be positioned on opposite sides of a reinforcing sheet to share that sheet in common. This configuration provides the same general benefits as provided by individual support with a backing element, but also has the added benefit of adding further structural integrity to an amassed array of supported cylinders of material, as this configuration tends to prevent adjacent supported layers of material from moving in a horizontal plane relative to each other, and especially in a lateral fashion parallel to the axis of cross supports.
Our invention resides not in any one of these features per se, but rather in the synergistic combination of all of them to give rise to the structures of our invention and the functions necessarily flowing therefrom as hereinafter more fully specified and claimed.